Skepticism

EVENTS

‘Tis the season

Halloween is over, and you know what that means: it’s time to start peddling stuff for the Christmas season, and it’s also time to start up the War on Christmas again. You can do both at the same time!

Last year, we created the Happy Monkey greeting card set. You can still get them! And you should get them soon, because you don’t want to leave all your postal obligations dangling until the last minute, and risk Aunt Gladys getting her Happy Monkey card on New Year’s Eve, meaning that she spent all of Christmas dinner glaring at you for your neglect.

But this year, we are dialing the knob up several notches beyond Monkey, all the way up to Squid. Yes, it’s true: you can now confound and confuse and conniptulate your relatives by sending them Squidmas cards. Also, they’re adorable.

And if that’s not enough, remember that the Pharyngula store has plenty of baffling geegaws to stuff into Squidmas stockings.

Please, PZ, not you too?! Please please please do not start referencing Christmas now! For goodness’ sake man, IT’S NOVEMBER! It’s not even the right month!

You’re fighting the valiant fight against cat pictures dominating the internet. Won’t anyone join me in my valiant fight against referencing Christmas in any way shape or form when it’s not even the right month for it? I don’t recall the 12 Days of Christmas song referencing November *once*, sir! In fact, I don’t remember *any* festive songs referencing November!

Save us from the conformist madness!

(I mean yeah okay I bought three advent calendars already but nobody separates me from fancy packaged white chocolate. That or my wheel of cheese. My point is that my interest is purely in the chocolate, not any coincidental festive event it’s attached to!)

I would say, to balance the frivolities of Midsummer, just call it Midwinter and drag ye olde logge around the house and burn it (the log not the house), like all good Latvians do this time of year. That, and throw pigs’ heads over the house for good luck.
Yeah. Best not to ask.

How can you not enjoy Xmas!!? It’s fantastic excuse to get the whole family together and eat waaaaaaay to much while getting ridiculously drunk on a mixture of beer, mulled wine, wine, port and whiskey; possibly with some sherry thrown in for good luck.

…At least, that’s how my family does it. It’s great. Especially since Grandad can’t handle neat whiskey anymore and refuses to pollute single malt with a mixer, which means he gives it all to me :)

Which means we should mock the tradition of mocking tradition. That would also be traditional. Which means . . . No. Not going there. (I think I see how weird things like “The Song of Songs” get started.)